Familyhttp://www.seattlemet.com/family
'Frozen' on Ice Comes to Everett and Kent<div class="inline-image-block inline-image mceNonEditable" data-crop="{&quot;id&quot;:49365,&quot;width&quot;:&quot;640&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:&quot;512&quot;,&quot;top&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;left&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;scale_width&quot;:&quot;640&quot;}" data-image-id="49365" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-block">
<div align="center" style="width: 640px;"><a class="lightbox" href="http://res.cloudinary.com/sagacity/image/upload/c_limit,w_993/Frozen_on_Ice_rligpz.jpg"> <img src="http://res.cloudinary.com/sagacity/image/upload/c_crop,h_512,w_640,x_0,y_0/c_fit,w_640/Frozen_on_Ice_rligpz.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
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<div>Image: <a class="attribution-link" href="/producers/photo-courtesy-feld-entertainment">Photo Courtesy Feld Entertainment</a></div>
Elsa's wintery powers will feel even more at home in Disney on Ice's <em>Frozen</em>.</div>
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<p>Calling Disney's <em>Frozen</em>&nbsp;a gargantuan hit is somehow underselling it.&nbsp;Not only is <em>Frozen</em> the highest-grossing animated film of all-time (over $1.25 billion), but its soundtrack was 2014 second best selling album (trailing only Taylor Swift's <em>1989</em>) and it spawned a seemingly never-ending flood of merchandise for the kiddies. Oh, and the movie itself is fantastic.</p>
<p>Local audiences will have a chance to experience an even chillier version of the blockbuster when Disney on Ice's <em>Frozen</em>&nbsp;heads to Everett's Xfinity Arena and Kent's ShoWare Center this November.&nbsp;While that's still a long way out, tickets go on sale next week. Judging by the <em>Frozen-</em>mania that still persists, it's probably a safe move to pick them up early rather than risk letting them go. (<span>♫ Let them go!&nbsp;<span>Let them go!</span><span>♫)</span></span></p>
Tickets for Disney on Ice's <em>Frozen</em> go on sale Tuesday, January 27 at 10am. Seats cost $30&ndash;$85 (children over the age of 2 need their own ticket). ShoWare Center tickets can be purchased at&nbsp;<a href="http://tickets.showarecenter.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=173" target="_blank">ShoWareCenter.com</a> or by phone at 866-973-9613. Xfinity Arena tickets can be bought via <a href="http://xfinityarenaeverett.com/Events/GeneralEvents.ashx?p=1154" target="_blank">XfinityArenaEverett.com</a> or by phone at 866-332-8499. <br />
<p><a href="http://www.seattlemet.com/events/disney-on-ice-frozen-january-2015"><strong>Disney on Ice: Frozen</strong></a><br /><strong>Nov 11&ndash;22, Xfinity Arena &amp; ShoWare Center, $30&ndash;$85</strong></p>
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</div>Thu, 22 Jan 2015 10:20:00 -0800http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/frozen-on-ice-comes-to-everett-and-kent-january-2015
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/frozen-on-ice-comes-to-everett-and-kent-january-2015Must-Haves for Kids<div class="inline-image-left inline-image mceNonEditable" data-crop="{&quot;id&quot;:29203,&quot;width&quot;:374,&quot;height&quot;:277,&quot;top&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;left&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;scale_width&quot;:&quot;200&quot;}" data-image-id="29203" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-left">
<div align="center"><a class="lightbox" href="/data/images/2013/4/image/29203/0513-childs-play-wooden-puzzle.jpg"> <img src="http://www.seattlemet.com/images/change?src=%2Fdata%2Fimages%2F2013%2F4%2Fimage%2F29203%2F0513-childs-play-wooden-puzzle.jpg&amp;cropify=374x277%2B0%2B0&amp;resize=200x%3E" alt="" /></a></div>
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<p class="p1">It was 2010 and Adrienne and David Minnery were looking for a way to spend more time at home with son Thomas, three, and baby Isabel. So the pair founded <strong>Manzanita Kids</strong> (Spanish for &ldquo;little apple&rdquo;) to craft handmade wooden puzzles and toys in the family&rsquo;s home workshop. David, a former landscape architect, uses American hardwoods that he seals with a blend of organic jojoba oil and beeswax to make each toy eco-friendly and kid safe. The <strong>rainbow puzzle</strong> is not only an artisan heirloom-quality piece, but it doubles as a developmental toy. <em>$28, manzanitakids.com. Most toys can be personalized with a child&rsquo;s name for $6.</em>&nbsp;</p>
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<div align="center"><a class="lightbox" href="/data/images/2013/4/image/29204/0513-childs-play-clay.jpg"> <img src="http://www.seattlemet.com/images/change?src=%2Fdata%2Fimages%2F2013%2F4%2Fimage%2F29204%2F0513-childs-play-clay.jpg&amp;cropify=405x360%2B0%2B0&amp;resize=200x%3E" alt="" /></a></div>
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<p class="p1">After searching in vain for natural, toddler-safe play dough options for her daughter, Kari Erickson--Valenzuela made her own. Countless kitchen trials and errors later, the accidental entrepreneur landed on a recipe made from gluten-free flours and soothing essential oils. And thus <strong>Mama K&rsquo;s</strong> <strong>aromatic play clay</strong> was born in early 2009. The moldable dough comes in seven scents and colors, including sweet orange, cardamom, and lavender&mdash;an -absorbing and fragrant activity for restless tots and stressed-out adults. <em>$5 each, mama-ks.com</em><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
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<div align="center"><a class="lightbox" href="/data/images/2013/4/image/29207/0513-childs-play-books.jpg"> <img src="http://www.seattlemet.com/images/change?src=%2Fdata%2Fimages%2F2013%2F4%2Fimage%2F29207%2F0513-childs-play-books.jpg&amp;cropify=497x252%2B0%2B0&amp;resize=200x%3E" alt="" /></a></div>
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<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>&nbsp;Josie Bissett</strong></span> loves reading to her son and daughter, but she wanted to make the experience a little more interactive. So the Seattle mom and former <em>Melrose Place</em>star penned a book series that would get children reading <em>and</em> moving. &ldquo;We love to laugh and dance, and one night while reading to them the idea for the books just came to me,&rdquo; she says of the inspiration behind <span class="s1"><strong>Tickle Monster</strong><em> </em></span>and <span class="s1"><strong>Boogie Monster</strong></span>. The books, illustrated by local artist Kevan Atteberry, are available with supplemental tickle gloves or boogie leggings to turn reading time into playtime. <em>$17&ndash;$40, josiebissett.com</em>&nbsp;</p>
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<div align="center"><a class="lightbox" href="/data/images/2013/4/image/29205/0513-childs-play-granola.jpg"> <img src="http://www.seattlemet.com/images/change?src=%2Fdata%2Fimages%2F2013%2F4%2Fimage%2F29205%2F0513-childs-play-granola.jpg&amp;cropify=405x420%2B0%2B0&amp;resize=200x%3E" alt="" /></a></div>
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<p class="p1">In the early &rsquo;90s, Marian Harris was serving homemade crackers in her two Seattle restaurants when she realized she might be able to sell them. She baked up a batch, delivered them to eight local stores, and had eight new orders within a week. Now the Kent-based snack company -<strong>Partners</strong> sells over 40 all-natural products, including <strong>Gourmet Granola</strong>. The old family recipe is slow baked in small batches, sweetened only with honey and sulfite-free fruit&mdash;making it a natural alternative to processed snacks. <em>$6 at Metropolitan Market and QFC, partnerscrackers.com</em></p>
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<div align="center"><a class="lightbox" href="/data/images/2013/4/image/29206/0513-childs-play-handmade-costumes.jpg"> <img src="http://www.seattlemet.com/images/change?src=%2Fdata%2Fimages%2F2013%2F4%2Fimage%2F29206%2F0513-childs-play-handmade-costumes.jpg&amp;cropify=469x389%2B0%2B0&amp;resize=200x%3E" alt="" /></a></div>
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<p class="p1">Kayce Quevedo grew up with a chestful of dressup clothes handmade by her mother, but when it was time to outfit her own children she was unable to find anything half as durable or imaginative. So she taught herself to sew and started her online costume collection, <strong>World of Whimm</strong>. The clothes are designed to spark children&rsquo;s imaginations, meaning you won&rsquo;t find any complete outfits on the site. &ldquo;Who says that a mermaid doesn&rsquo;t wear a superhero cape and antlers?&rdquo; Quevedo says. The <strong>mask-and-cuff set</strong> is made to fit superheroes of all sizes. <em>$15, worldofwhimm.etsy.com</em></p>
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<div align="center"><a class="lightbox" href="/data/images/2013/4/image/29208/0513-childs-play-reusable-lunchbox-bags.jpg"> <img src="http://www.seattlemet.com/images/change?src=%2Fdata%2Fimages%2F2013%2F4%2Fimage%2F29208%2F0513-childs-play-reusable-lunchbox-bags.jpg&amp;cropify=352x374%2B0%2B0&amp;resize=200x%3E" alt="" /></a></div>
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<p class="p1">Every time Becky Harper packed her kids&rsquo; lunches, she cringed as she imagined used plastic baggies clogging a landfill. So in 2009 she designed a line of <span class="s1"><strong>reusable bags</strong></span> to cut down on costs&mdash;to the environment and her wallet. Harper&rsquo;s cotton <span class="s1"><strong>ReUsies</strong></span> (based in West Seattle) are hand sewn and lined with leak-resistant nylon. Plus they can be wiped clean with a soapy sponge. <em>Starting at $5, reusies.com</em></p>
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<p class="p1"><em>Published: May 2013</em></p>Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0700http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/must-haves-for-kids-may-2013
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/must-haves-for-kids-may-2013College Application Angst<div class="inline-image-block inline-image mceNonEditable" data-image-id="4339" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-block">&nbsp;</div><p><strong>WE <span class="caps"><span class="caps">WEREN</span></span>&rsquo;T ON <span class="caps"><span class="caps">THE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">PHONE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">BUT</span></span> 30 <span class="caps"><span class="caps">SECONDS</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">BEFORE</span></span> I <span class="caps"><span class="caps">KNEW</span></span> MY <span class="caps"><span class="caps">OLD</span></span></strong> friend wasn&rsquo;t right. &ldquo;Aw, I&rsquo;m okay,&rdquo; she said dully. &ldquo;Just a little sad lately.&rdquo; Sleeping a lot, waking hopeless, sleeping some more. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it is. Thankfully the kids don&rsquo;t seem too affected.&rdquo;</p>
<p>She had four of them, making her as much of an overachiever in parenting as she was in every other area of her life. In college she had leveled us all with grades she didn&rsquo;t appear to work for. She was multitalented, well loved, almost excruciatingly enviable&mdash;and born without a competitive bone in her body. Now she was helping her eldest navigate his search for a college, and for the first time in her life, she was depressed.</p>
<p>What on earth did she have to worry about? This kid was a top-of-his-class basketball all-leaguer who spent his off-hours feeding the hungry. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said with finality. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not worried about him.&rdquo; Funny then, how when the fat letter from Duke University arrived a few months later, a switch flipped. Overnight, my friend got her mojo back.</p>
<p>This was about six college application seasons ago, and I have since learned what hell those seasons can represent for parents of high school seniors. Being a writer by trade, my friends come to me for counsel on everything from family obituaries to the phrasing of their e-vites. College application essays top the list. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like we want you to write it <em>for</em> him&hellip;&rdquo; one friend insisted. (By which she meant: &ldquo;Do you think you could maybe write it for him?&rdquo;)</p>
<p>Of course not. But the parental requests have been telling: the frayed edges of their appeals betraying outright panic. <em>Panic?</em> How times have changed. My only personal experience with the college essay was my own&mdash;tell us what book you&rsquo;d write, and why&mdash;scribbled off while babysitting the night before it was due. The next day I sent it off to Stanford University, the only school I wanted, along with one to the UW, my fallback school. My parents stayed out of it.</p>
<p>Today parents pay thousands of dollars to private consultants who help their little darlings identify fitting schools, practice SATs, and refine draft after draft of autobiographical essays. (These essays might spring from a prompt, like University of Pennsylvania&rsquo;s famous &ldquo;You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217,&rdquo; or a question, like University of Chicago&rsquo;s &ldquo;How do you feel about Wednesday?&rdquo;) As it happened I did get into Stanford&mdash;today impenetrable to all but those who can claim national excellence in something. And the UW, which last year littered the floor with rejected four-point students, is no longer anyone&rsquo;s fallback.</p>
<p>No wonder parents are freaked out. Admissions consultant Judy MacKenzie, owner of MacKenzie College Consulting in Lake Forest Park and Bellevue, affirms that parental stress over kids&rsquo; college prospects is a big reason her business is booming. Before hanging out a shingle she worked in admissions at Princeton and Dartmouth; she figures she&rsquo;s read 30,000 college essays, and counting. (Her list of essay topics to avoid: Death, A Trip Abroad, My Favorite Coach, What I Don&rsquo;t Like About My School, and How My Community Service Project Made Me Realize How Lucky I Am.)</p>
<p>&ldquo;The bar&rsquo;s gone way up, and applying to colleges is a whole lot more complex now,&rdquo; MacKenzie says. And fraught, California admissions consultant Paul Wruble told <em>The Chicago Tribune</em> last year, with angst that has less to do with the applicants than their parents. &ldquo;One of the measures of successful parenting, apparently, is the name and prestige of the college our kids go to,&rdquo; he told the paper. &ldquo;Somehow that anoints us.&rdquo;</p>
<p><em>Gross!</em> I opined to my aforementioned friend, who is spending this winter walking the college application gantlet again, now with her third born. <em>Do you really think parents care that much about the status of the school their kid gets accepted to?</em></p>
<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a stay-at-home mom,&rdquo; she said after a moment. &ldquo;What other work evaluation am I going to get?&rdquo;</p>
<p>Real life offers no finals week, no job performance review. For my friend, the verdict on her kids&rsquo; college acceptances is as close to a grade as she&rsquo;ll get for a lifetime of careful parenting. For goal-oriented achievers who spent high school working toward good colleges, college working toward worthy jobs, their 20s establishing careers, their 30s building families, their 40s creating dream homes&mdash;the 50s descend bearing this little zinger: <em>No one arrives</em>.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s the great shock of midlife: that all that linear striving from milestone to milestone no longer serves as an organizing paradigm. And it hits just about the time the kids are heading off to college. That&rsquo;s when the well-adjusted among us find new paradigms, maybe finally getting around to that live-in-the-moment thing they&rsquo;ve had on their to-do list for decades.</p>
<p>As for the rest of us, we keep doing what we know: seeking new achievements to pin to our impressive resumes. Even if they aren&rsquo;t our achievements at all.</p>Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:00 -0800http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/college-application-angst-january-2012
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/college-application-angst-january-2012The Bully Backlash<div class="inline-image-left inline-image mceNonEditable" data-image-id="3843" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-left">&nbsp;</div><p><strong><span class="caps"><span class="caps">LOOK</span></span> UP <span class="caps"><span class="caps">THE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">WORD</span></span></strong> <em>alpha</em> in the dictionary and there’s a picture of my young friend Peanut, a girl I’ve known by her goofy family nickname—not that one, of course—since she was in preschool.</p>
<p>She was an alpha then, too, the one whose reaction the other kids reflexively checked to see whether to laugh or snicker at a joke. Loud, funny, dynamic, Peanut was a born leader.</p>
<p>In seventh grade she made a new friend and—as with so many middle school alliances—all was well until it wasn’t. Without warning the new friend began to go all “frenemy” on Peanut, dissing her widely and giving no clue as to why. “She’s turning everyone against me!” Peanut sobbed to her mother.</p>
<p>And so Peanut did what alphas do: She took matters into her own hands. She launched a spin campaign on her own behalf, working to regain the favor she’d lost and to defend against her frenemy’s slurs. It didn’t take long for the school administration to get wind of this rip in the seventh grade’s social fabric, and that’s how Peanut and her parents wound up in the principal’s office. He invoked the new B word: “bully.” <em>Was she or was she not trying to sour classmates on a mutual friend?</em> Suspension was considered.</p>
<p>After all, the principal said—Peanut knew the rules. Every kid does. Beginning with Columbine and flowering amidst a tragic spate of teen suicides, antibullying programs have become a regular part of elementary, middle, and high school education. What some adults initially regarded as needless handwringing over an unavoidable rite of passage managed to change minds. The antibullying messages appropriated the basic tenets of human rights—respect, justice, dignity—and applied them to the schoolyard. These lessons are increasingly relevant given their increasingly multicultural settings, especially as counterpoint to a television world that depicts as “reality” Beverly Hills housewives clawing one anothers’ eyes out.</p>
<p>The tenets of antibullying programs I’ve seen are simple and based on this: Dignity is not negotiable. Sometimes bullying looks like fists flying on the playground; more times it looks like girls dramatically stopping conversation when an unwelcome other joins them at the lunch table. Girl culture is particularly rife with this insidious brand of slight.</p>
<p>Last spring <span class="caps"><span class="caps">SIFF</span></span> screened a documentary, <em>Finding Kind</em>, about the painful emotional fallout from abuses in the world of teen girls. Next month, timed to the beginning of the school year, the film returns to Seattle. The most powerful parts were shot in a private confessional dubbed the “Truth Booth,” where girls shared their stories before a camera. There, a girl who began composed would crumple as she recounted breathtaking acts of emotional cruelty—classmates sustaining years-long campaigns to shut her out; girlfriends pretending friendship with her only to humiliate her, <em>Carrie</em>-like, in public.</p>
<p>At the screening there were other mothers in the audience, so I was not the only dork choking back sobs. I was heartened to notice that the three 14-ish-year-old girls seated next to me were also surreptitiously wiping away tears. “That’s so <em>harsh</em>,” one murmured.</p>
<p>By the end of the movie, however, my seatmates were confused. In one scene several teenage schoolgirls sitting around a living room denied having bullying issues, but then devolved into teary admissions revealing complex, <em>Lord of the Flies</em>–like social hierarchies and jealousy from those who saw themselves at the bottom of it. The target of their envy, a beautiful blonde, broke down in sobs as she realized and regretted the pain her status had, however inadvertently, inflicted on her friends.</p>
<p>“I just don’t think it was the pretty one’s fault,” one of my seatmates reflected to her friends. “I mean, like, her prettiness wasn’t something she was <em>doing</em> to them,” another agreed. “It wasn’t her fault they were jealous.”</p>
<p>But under the spotlight we’ve trained on teenage power dynamics, the girls could be forgiven for making the assumption that it was. In the movie the pretty girl’s friends felt badly about themselves, that they weren’t as pretty or popular as she was. When seen through the lens of the antibullying message they’d dutifully internalized—that if they feel slighted by someone, it means they’ve been bullied—you could see how they might conclude that the pretty girl was responsible for their pain.</p>
<p>“Aaaargh, that’s <em>absolutely</em> not the point!” cried Rosalind Wiseman, author of <em>Queen Bees and Wannabes</em>, the non-fiction book that inspired the movie <em>Mean Girls</em>. When I called her she was finishing up an article on how unwittingly misleading antibullying programs can be. Bullying is systematic abuse, overt or subtle, that’s unmistakably brutal. But an alpha whose consciousness has been raised by antibullying programs can end up taking too much responsibility for the inferior feelings of every unhappy girl, a classic female trap of another kind. “That whole ‘nice’ stuff can be so toxic for girls,” Wiseman sighed.</p>
<p>The nonalpha, for her part, can become convinced that she’s being excluded by the mere existence of another pair’s friendship, put down by the simple reality of another girl’s success, or “bullied” by another girl’s higher rung on the social ladder.</p>
<p>Peanut’s parents pressed the principal to meet independently with her antagonists, and that evening her parents’ phone rang. “We owe you and Peanut an apology,” the principal confessed.</p>
<p>Amid the current fervor, even adults can mistake personal power for bullying. What the principal had assumed was Peanut holding her usual sway over her followers was, he discovered, Peanut struggling to make sense of a confusing betrayal the only way she knew how—by processing it with her friends. “She was trying to get her friends to see she wasn’t a bad person like this girl was saying,” Peanut’s mom told me. “And trying to figure out why this girl was suddenly so hateful. I can see where it would look like gossip.”</p>
<p>The meeting persuaded the principal that the real perps were the girl who had turned on Peanut and the kids who joined her—seeking to dethrone the one whose primary sin was being top dog.<br />
<br />
Make no mistake—the antibullying crusade adds humanity to our kids’ educations, like service learning (school-based volunteer work) did before it. But bullying episodes are more often sketched in shades of gray than black and white, occurring in social milieus with imbalances of popularity and charisma. Helping our kids wrap language and meaning around these complexities, always expecting fair behavior—that’s the excellent work being done in these programs. Perhaps they’ll also help our kids see that part of the awful work of growing up is learning that not every painful feeling is somebody’s fault.</p>Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:00:00 -0700http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/teen-bullying-august-2011
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/teen-bullying-august-2011Would It Work Here? Brunch Without Brats!
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<p>“Kids don’t pay,” said Dale Levitski, executive chef at Sprout restaurant in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. The <em>Top Chef</em> alum attracted headlines recently when he banned diners under 12 years of age from his weekend brunch service. Levitski says Sprout’s is a boozy brunch, comprised of composed dishes made from fastidiously sourced local ingredients. Plus “the dining room is small. High chairs and strollers would make it impossible to navigate. It’s honestly a fire hazard.” The response? “Overwhelmingly positive. Parents are making reservations because they want away from their kids, and they don’t want to deal with other people’s.”</p>
<p>That wouldn’t fly at <a href="/restaurants/hi-spot-cafe"><strong>Hi Spot Cafe</strong></a>, says Mike Walker, owner of the Madrona brunch institution where crowds of young families vie for five on-site high chairs and Mickey Mouse pancakes are a popular order. A restaurant in his neck of the woods, he says, could never go no-kids without drawing the ire of Madrona Moms, a parenting organization with over 2,000 members. (The Moms recommend services to one another—plumbers, babysitters—on a list serve, and neighborhood merchants joke nervously that they can make or break a business.)</p>
<p>But <a href="/restaurants/spring-hill"><strong>Spring Hill</strong></a>’s Mark Fuller—who serves a much more adult brunch at his West Seattle storefront—thinks a kid ban could work in Seattle. “It may upset some people, but if what the restaurant delivers at the table is good, I believe Seattle would support it.”</p>
<p>Would he dare ban wee ones from his own eatery? “Probably not.”</p>
</body></html>Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0700http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/children-banned-in-restaurants-may-2011
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/children-banned-in-restaurants-may-2011Freaked About Freak Dancing<div class="inline-image-left inline-image mceNonEditable" data-image-id="3563" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-left">&nbsp;</div><p><strong><span class="caps"><span class="caps">THE</span></span> KE$HA <span class="caps"><span class="caps">SONG</span></span></strong> in the darkened school gym throbbed loud as a warning siren, and I, middle school dance chaperone, was trolling the periphery. “Be on the lookout for roving hands,” the DJ had emailed the chaperones. Ah youth, I sighed, remembering.</p>
<p>“Also keep an eye out for kids grinding; that is something that happens a lot,” his note continued.</p>
<p>Okay. That I <em>didn’t</em> remember.</p>
<p>Grinding: where the female dancer waggles her butt up against her male partner’s privates. No point being coy about it; the practice also called freak dancing has been making news reports and the parental gossip circuit for several years now, nationally and locally. It thrives against a throbbing hip-hop soundtrack. Not a school is immune.</p>
<p>I’ve certainly heard plenty about the attempted fixes. Nathan Hale adopted a 45-degree-angle rule, stating that no body may become more, uh, acute than that—and no hands may be on the floor. Garfield imposed a wristband policy, in which freakers get their wristbands snipped on the first infraction; their booties booted on the second. At Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, kids sign self-governance contracts that include no-freaking language. And Bush School finally got so fed up with lewd moves it substituted the best fix it could think of: a swing dance. (Not a record turnout, that event.)</p>
<p>I’d just never actually seen kids in the act—and was fervently hoping not to tonight, at a mixer where the dancers, from a handful of Seattle middle schools, were barely into their teens. As I patrolled the scene, however, I relaxed. Girls bobbed with girls. Boys hung awkwardly in clumps, hands jammed in their pockets. Boys and girls paired up sporadically when the music got romantic, to slow dance like robots. Maybe I wouldn’t need my protractor after all.</p>
<p>That’s when I saw them. A sweet couple at the edge of a close circle of spectators, she with her back to the guy, were pushing their hips around impressively, not a mote of daylight between them. My first thought? Honestly? <em>Gaaah! Get a room!</em></p>
<p>Instinctively I averted my eyes and made to move away when I thought: They’re children. Stopping this was my job. <em>But they’re not lying on the floor!</em> I rationalized. (“Upright and vertical,” has become one local high school’s standard for acceptable dancing.) <em>He’s not violating her!</em> (Alas, actual penetration—uh, somewhere between what goes down in a gynecologist’s office and an airport security checkpoint—has reportedly occurred during dances in at least two local schools.) <em>He didn’t even leave to put on a condom!</em> (A fabled preemptive measure by young men who fear they won’t be able to…contain themselves.)</p>
<p>Truth is—I was embarrassed. <br />
The boy wasn’t embarrassed, having quite obviously gone to his happy place. Neither, I marveled, was the girl. Yet here she was, allowing herself to be exploited. In public! I mean, the guy’s titillation notwithstanding—what was in it for her?</p>
<p>An apple-cheeked high-school freaker of my acquaintance—an otherwise bookish young woman who wore her status as the freak queen of her high school proudly as a letterman’s jacket—had once told me: “If you think I’m being exploited, you’re just looking from the wrong direction.” She said it with a proud smile. “From the guy’s perspective, you see my back. But flip it around…everyone who’s watching sees my front! They can see that I’ve got what he wants. They can see that I’m in control.”</p>
<p>Indeed, if the couple before me was any indication, an audience was <em>the</em> essential element of freaking’s appeal. The two of them smiled and mugged, playing to their crowd. One school administrator told me she frankly didn’t know how often grinding happened at her school dances; she could never see through the crush of kid spectators to find out. “Unless you’re walking right through the middle of the circle, you can’t see what’s happening,” she sighed. “It’s worrisome.”</p>
<p>Maybe freaking is no different from the sexual boundary pushing every generation inflicts on its elders—boundary pushing these kids’ parents and grandparents used, don’t forget, to kick off a full-scale culture war—only brought to us now by Generation YouTube. What we furtively snuck out to do in the backseats of cars they’re doing right out in front of God, man, and friends with Flip cams. It’s the same combustible cocktail of rebellion and grasping for independence that has always characterized adolescence—only now acted out in increasingly public ways, in an increasingly <em>public</em> public sphere, by young women who are freshly sexually empowered and young men who can’t believe their good luck.</p>
<p>With trepidation I approached the enlarging circle. “Uh, hey,” I scream-­whispered over the music, tapping Mr. Lucky on the shoulder—hoping he couldn’t tell I had no idea what I was doing. (Fleetingly I considered doing the hustle, a couple of seasoned high school teachers having assured me that nothing spells cold shower for a horny teen quite like the sight of his math teacher in a conga line.)</p>
<p>No, I knew that <em>limits</em> were needed, the kind of clear, direct, uncompromising limits that my generation (or, at least, this chaperone) felt uncomfortable—maybe even hypocritical—expecting of the next generation. Would it even be too extreme to suggest that freaking proves today’s kids are begging for boundaries? Uh…well, probably. But there’s no question that when kids choose to bring their raging hormones out of the backseat and onto the dance floor…it gives parents a rare and significant gift: the chance to comment.</p>
<p>“That’s too close,” I declared into Mr. Lucky’s ear, then again into Ms. Empowered’s. Even as they burst out laughing I knew I’d done the right thing—and not just because they proceeded to unglue their body parts. At that moment I wish I could’ve shouted over the music exactly why it was right: They were too young. This was too public. Sex was too rich and intimate and confounding and powerful to learn first as a floor show.</p>
<p>As I walked away I could still hear laughter. Who knows if my admonition did a thing for them. I just know it did something for me.</p>Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0700http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/parenting-school-dances-may-2011
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/parenting-school-dances-may-2011Rattus Rattus<div class="inline-image-left inline-image mceNonEditable" data-image-id="3506" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-left">&nbsp;</div><p><strong><span class="caps"><span class="caps">ONE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">DAY</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">LAST</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">FALL</span></span>,</strong> watching an Anne Hathaway movie with my family, I looked out the window to see a rat shambling across our deck.</p>
<p>I shrieked words my daughter had no idea I knew, then jumped meaninglessly onto the couch and screamed, “I’M <span class="caps"><span class="caps">GONNA</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">THROW</span></span> UP!!!”</p>
<p>I didn’t enter that room again for three weeks and I never will finish that movie. (Anne Hathaway is <em>dead</em> to me now.) Sure, it’s irrational. I had history. Eight years earlier, in a former house, just back from a family camping trip, I walked with my then four-year-old daughter into her adorable buttercup-yellow bedroom to find two big greasy rats frolicking on her bed. Her <em>bed</em>.</p>
<p>This impressive scene led to: me scooping up my kid and running crazed into the street, my husband packing our bags and calling a hotel, us hiring a pest control professional and, finally, a contractor, who through a formidable combination of wire netting and foam and fresh concrete hermetically sealed up every domestic entry point larger than a quarter—the size we were told a rat could slip through.</p>
<p>I breathed easier after that. Until the day a grizzled old-timer doing unrelated work on our house chuckled at our naivete. Houses are porous, he shrugged; rats are motivated. Cold and hungry enough, they find their way in. “There’s two kinds of people in Seattle,” he grinned toothlessly. “The ones that know they got rats. And the ones that don’t.”</p>
<p>We moved that spring.</p>
<p>He was right: Seattle <em>is</em> overrepresented with the vermin, across all neighborhoods and socioeconomic divides—a function of our watery habitat and mild winters. Rats can swim a half mile, shimmy up drain pipes, get three feet of vertical air off a flat surface.</p>
<p>Some, Norway rats, live in sewers; they’re bigger, meaner, greasier. Others, roof rats—species name <em>Rattus rattus</em>—are leaner and tree agile, preferring attic habitats. Both can smell and gnaw through plastic—plastic not unlike the compost bins into which good green Seattleites now dutifully dump fragrant meat scraps. And though King County officials insist that weekly compost pickups keep the beasts in check, our latest pest control professional mentioned that last year—the first winter of Seattle meat composting—was one memorably lucrative season in the Seattle rodent-hunting business.</p>
<p>Yes, our <em>latest</em> pest control professional. During February’s frigid spell we discovered—droppings in the basement, scritch-scratchings after dark—that our new house was no better fortified than our old one. My husband laid traps in the basement, which the next morning he found untripped but lavishly pooped upon—rodent Esperanto for, <em>Yo chumps! We’ll outlast you, too!</em> Enter Ulises, a pest-control professional with a reputation mighty as his mythic name. “The key,” our hero told us intently, “is to think like the rat.”</p>
<p>With methodical precision Ulises scoured our basement for forensic evidence. No pet food, no birdseed—“Good, that means they probably got in by mistake.” When he found a little entry point at the corner of the garage door, I despaired. But the garage led only to dead ends. And cunning Ulises found no other entrances. “People assume rats prefer old houses like yours, but in fact new construction usually leaves more points of entry,” he said. “Any work done on your house lately?” No, I told him. Well, besides a little gutter repair.</p>
<p>Ulises smiled. “I’ll get my ladder.” And that’s how he found the missing piece of fascia along our eaves, its exterior scratched with claw marks, its interior heady with rat pee, its location aligned both with the scritching sounds and a straight shot into the basement.</p>
<p>Ulises sealed it up, then handily caught our friend <em>Rattus rattus</em> in a trap he knew precisely where to place. “You will not have any more problems with rats,” he pronounced with glorious conclusiveness, packing up his hero’s kit bag and sailing triumphantly back to Ithaca. I mean United Pest Solutions.</p>
<p>I was euphoric with relief. A house really <em>was</em> sealable! “Yes, almost entirely!” agreed a county public health employee I called for this story.</p>
<p>Uh, almost?</p>
<p>“Well, sewer rats <em>will</em> come up through toilets,” she sighed. Happened 73 times in Seattle last year. “Always leave your lid down. You know…when you can.”</p>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:30:00 -0700http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/back-fence-rodent-proofing-houses-0411
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/back-fence-rodent-proofing-houses-0411The Carnivore’s Dilemma
<div class="inline-image-left inline-image mceNonEditable" data-image-id="3452" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-left"> </div>
<p><strong>"IF <span class="caps"><span class="caps">THE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">GOOD</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">LORD</span></span></strong> had wanted us to eat only vegetables, He wouldn’ta made cows outta sirloin steak,” bellows the voice in my head.</p>
<p>It’s a big manly Texan voice, and if it weren’t for the dearth of big manly Texan men in my childhood I would swear it was an early memory. Instead I’m forced to conclude that it’s the voice of my subconscious, which would be horrifying if its sentiments weren’t in full accord with my conscious mind, the requirements for my job as a restaurant critic, and my daughter’s appetite. “I <span class="caps"><span class="caps">LOVE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">MEAT</span></span>!” was the first thing she wrote on her Facebook page.</p>
<p>Which is simply to say—I didn’t see this coming.</p>
<p>“Mom, big news!” she crackled through the cellphone from music camp in California last summer. “I’ve decided to become a vegetarian!” Do not react strongly, I told myself. Do not sign her up again for anything in the Santa Cruz Mountains.</p>
<p>Turns out she’d been consorting with vegans all week, supercool teenage vegans, whose healthful propaganda turned her carnivorous little head. Here I must point out that I have nothing against herbivores; I am live-and-let-live about people’s dining choices (even if I’m not, apparently, about the destinies of cows and sheep.) Vegetarians are fine; I just don’t want to feed one. I didn’t want to prepare her separate meals any more than I wanted to graze at her feedbag. It was hard enough making sure she got enough nutrients within her picky 12-year-old’s repertoire; even if she wasn’t going all-out vegan, taking away the obvious protein anchor of every meal seemed nuts. Literally. She’d have to eat so many nuts.</p>
<p>But I also knew that a power struggle would not go well for Mom. No, this would require stealth. By the time she returned from camp, I had devised a four-step plan to lure her back to the slaughterhouse—of her own volition.</p>
<p>And so Step One: The most objectionably vegetal welcome-home meal I could stand to prepare. The strongest brassicas, the stinkiest cheeses, a big, nasty mushroom-tofu fry-up. All cleverly designed to simultaneously convey my loving support of her new food lifestyle and gross her the hell out.</p>
<p>Fail. “You know, tofu’s impossible to hate because it doesn’t taste like anything!” she warbled, helping herself to seconds. Yes, she left the mushrooms in a little black heap on her plate, but when she gamely took a second bite of her first-ever Brussels sprout, I knew I had a dangerously backfiring strategy on my hands. Time for Step Two.</p>
<p>“I made an appointment with your doctor so we can make sure you stay healthy,” I told her lightly, envisioning the bottles of supplements, the disapproving nutrition lecture.</p>
<p>Instead her doctor clapped her hands in the air and beamed. “I love it when kids take charge of their own nutrition!” she said. “Vegetarianism can be perfectly healthy when done responsibly. My daughter’s been a vegetarian since she was about your age.” Her daughter, I learned, was 22. “A prenatal vitamin will supplement your iron just fine,” she said, and with a few further directives sent us on our way.</p>
<p>“Wow, so the same vitamin pregnant women take,” I remarked on the way to the car, certain that would send her tweener self-consciousness into a spiral of mortification. “I know,” she sighed happily. “I’ll be healthy as a newborn!”</p>
<p>I wanted to scream. Where was Little Miss Medium Rare? Had all those stupid vampire books taught her nothing?</p>
<p>I didn’t even wait to get home before launching Step Three. “Vegetarian enchiladas tonight—but only if you help me make them,” I declared. Mandating help with the increased prep requirements of vegetarian cooking, a kindred mom had clued me, would wrap this up handily. “Sure, Mom!” she chirped. “Beats algebra!”</p>
<p>{page break}<br><br>
I laughed nervously, applauded her willing spirit…then watched as the weeks unfolded and chopping vegetables really did begin to beat algebra. Between the nonnegotiables of school and homework and sleep we already shoehorned in the extracurriculars she loved; practically speaking, when was all this new kitchen work going to take place? <em>Apologies, Madame, but our daughter will have to miss ballet this afternoon, as there are carrots to chop</em>, had a nicely medieval ring, but wasn’t going to fly off the tongue. Neglecting algebra wasn’t going to fly, period.</p>
<p>Back to the chopping block for Mom.</p>
<p>And so I went crazy. Crazy enough to bring on Step Four; a step so cruel and unusual it’s hard for me to admit to in print. Let’s just say that somehow a big, greasy, freakishly aromatic bag of <a href="/eat-and-drink/find-a-restaurant/#/search:business_listing.name=Ezell's/"><strong>Ezell’s</strong></a> fried chicken wound up in the car when I picked her up from school. “Dad’s and my dinner tonight,” I said mildly. “There’s some leftover quinoa bake for you.” The longing I could see in the rearview mirror—Ezell’s fried chicken was her annual birthday dinner—nearly broke my resolve, but I needn’t have worried.</p>
<p>By evening it had broken hers.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>By the time she returned from camp I had devised a four-step plan to lure my daughter back to the slaughterhouse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Mom, Dad,” she began formally, her fork flattening her quinoa into a landscape feature. “As you know, I took on this vegetarian experiment three months ago out of a desire to be healthier. I believe this has been accomplished.” As she ticked off the self-improvements—she now liked more vegetables, took a daily vitamin, had learned more about cooking, strengthened her willpower, taken charge of her own nutrition…I was startled to realize that this annoying little experiment, so revealing of my worst, had brought out her very best.</p>
<p>Including wisdom beyond her years. “So it’s in the name of good health that I’d like to maintain all my new habits and bring back the food that brings me joy,” she concluded, eyeing a golden drumstick.</p>
<p>I passed it to her and she took a bite, and I watched a blissful smile break across her face. Vegetarianism didn’t win this one, but, I had to admit, neither did I. She did.</p>
</body></html>Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/back-fence-march-vegetarianism-0311
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/back-fence-march-vegetarianism-0311Single (and Kid-Free) in Seattle<div class="inline-image-block inline-image mceNonEditable" data-image-id="3197" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-block">&nbsp;</div><h2><strong>56</strong></h2>
<p>Percent of Seattleites who live alone, according to newly released U.S. Census data.<br />
<br></p>
<h2><strong>56.5</strong></h2>
<p>Percent of the city’s residents who drive to work alone.<br />
<br></p>
<h2><strong>33</strong></h2>
<p>Percent of households statewide without children.<br />
<br></p>
<h2><strong>80</strong></h2>
<p>Percent of households in Seattle without children.<br />
<br></p>
<h2><strong>2</strong></h2>
<p>Seattle’s rank among major U.S. cities with the fewest number of children per capita. (Only San Francisco beats us in childlessness.)</p>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:30:00 -0800http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/us-census-single-childless-seattleites-0211
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/us-census-single-childless-seattleites-0211Lice and Easy<div class="inline-image-left inline-image mceNonEditable" data-image-id="3136" data-include-caption="true" data-layout="inline-image-left">&nbsp;</div><p><strong><span class="caps"><span class="caps">THE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">WHOLE</span></span> <span class="caps"><span class="caps">EPISODE</span></span></strong> might not have felt like such a knife to the privates if it hadn’t started with my daughter getting booted out of the hairdresser’s chair.</p>
<p>“I won’t be able to cut your daughter’s hair today,” the stylist said quietly, waiting till we’d moved out of earshot of the other patrons. She parted my kid’s light brown hair to reveal teensy light brown specks the approximate size of dust motes. “Head lice,” she whispered.</p>
<p>“Those tiny things are <em>lice</em>?” I gasped. The way people talked about lice I’d always pictured them stomping across the scalp like little wildebeests. “Well, eggs. Nits,” she clarified. “They’ll hatch into lice if you don’t get rid of them.”</p>
<p>I must’ve looked stricken, because she put a consoling hand on my shoulder&#8212;bravely I thought, under the circumstances&#8212;and advised me to buy some Rid. “You’ll want to launder everything, seal pillows in plastic, boil all your brushes,” she advised. “It’s a bit of a job, but you’ll get ’em.”</p>
<p>A <em>bit</em> of a job? A few hours later I stood in my kitchen staring at the 38 pages of small-print instructions that came with the Rid and Nix lice removal treatments I had bought in my Donald Rumsfeld assault on Rite Aid. Never mind that these products were poison: My goal was shock and awe.</p>
<p>Around me loomed Himalayas of laundry&#8212;everything the kid had breathed near in the last two weeks&#8212;along with the duvet I had no idea how to clean. (Who keeps the cleaning tag on their duvet?) How long must one boil a brush? Must I hermetically seal the hair scrunchies before throwing them in the trash, the way one is advised to do with used vacuum bags&#8212;or should I add them to the brush soup? And where do we <em>keep</em> the vacuum bags? I looked to see if the Nix kit included any Valium.</p>
<p>Just then the phone rang&#8212;my daughter’s friend&#8212;and it struck me that, thanks to the highly contagious nature of this affliction, I had a few calls to make. “We have lice,” I blurted to the mom, who turned out to be a walking Wikipedia entry on the topic. “Oh, we’ve had ’em lots of times,” she said calmly. “The most important thing is: Never use Rid or Nix.” <em>Crap</em>. “They’re toxic and the lice around here have developed resistance to them anyway.” <em>Oh great, the little f#&amp;!ers are smart.</em> “What you need is olive oil and a heavy-duty ­LiceMeister nit comb. I got mine online.”</p>
<p>A heavy-duty LiceMeister nit comb? My spirits sank when I looked at the cheapo plastic number that came in the Nix kit&#8212;note to Insight Pharmaceuticals: Valium would be more useful&#8212;and was suddenly overcome with a powerful urge to go to bed. On Day One of our lice invasion, I hadn’t even <em>looked</em> at her hair yet and already I felt overwhelmed. All I could think about was Lice Mom’s advice: It’s all about the combing. “If you miss even one nit,” she’d cautioned, “you might as well have done nothing.”</p>
<p>I don’t know how long I sat, inert and defeated, ignoring the laundry and my LiceMeister Google search and my stockpile of poisons and my teeming, scratching child&#8212;before the doorbell rang. “ <em>Lice Squad</em>!” sang two chipper voices through the door.</p>
<p>Standing on our threshold were Lice Mom and her daughter&#8212;garbed in shower caps and hazmat-issue coveralls, smiling broadly and holding out the Grail itself: A gleaming metal LiceMeister nit comb. “I could tell you were losing it, so we brought ours over,” said Lice Mom, already elbow-deep in my kid’s tresses. “Ah, yeah,” she diagnosed cheerfully, plucking out a nit like a seasoned chimpanzee. “Wow, okay. Let’s take this show into the bathroom, shall we? Cause that dude came from a <em>big</em> family.”</p>
<p>{page break}</p>
<p>And there, over our bathtub, Lice Mom demonstrated on my daughter the lice-removal method that had worked for her, and for the mom who had come to her house to teach her, and the generations of mothers who’d been taught by the generations before them…all the way back to the dawn of prehistory, when cave moms undoubtedly demonstrated for each other how to pick the parasites off their babies with their teeth.</p>
<p>All at once I was seized by how <em>primal</em> infestation was&#8212;like childbirth, or like the plague&#8212;and, I discovered, eyes stinging with gratitude as my dear friend skillfully combed the buggers out one by infinitesimal one…how <em>tribal</em>. We pass our contagions; we share our remedies. As healers know, and good neighbors, and the whole invisible web of mothers and fathers who labor in community to sustain their own and one another’s children day after day&#8212;<em>we need each other</em>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On Day One of our lice invasion, I hadn’t even looked at her hair yet and already I felt overwhelmed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This might have been an affecting epiphany had it not taken place in a room where vermin were raining off my child’s head. But it got me through the blur of incessant laundering, brush boiling, bed changing, and nit-picking that filled our next two weeks. It wasn’t just the work, though that was relentless; it was the standard of perfection required. There may be no other affliction whose cure requires the overnight attainment of advanced <span class="caps"><span class="caps">OCD</span></span>. It didn’t do any favors for my generally pacifist nature, either. “I wonder how Buddhist monks deal with this,” I growled to my husband one night, squeezing a plump one between my fingers and relishing the violent little death-pop it made as it bought the farm.</p>
<p>“They have no hair,” he said.</p>
<p>But every day I talked to more people who’d dealt with head lice&#8212;turns out everyone under the age of 17 has had it, twice&#8212;and slowly I began to feel the warmth of a subculture gathering around me. From them I learned about the natural product, LiceMD, that finally did the trick for us. Another mom helpfully clued me in to Fairy Tales’ Rosemary Repel shampoo, an herbal lice repellent that my kid will now wash her hair with till I stop having any say in the matter.</p>
<p>“The minute you told me about your daughter, I put mine right back on the Fairy Tales,” this mother told me. <em>Aaaargh</em>, I sighed. <em>I hate that our ailment has become your problem</em>.</p>
<p>“Nonsense!” she corrected. “Getting lice means you have friends.”</p>Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:00:00 -0800http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/january-back-fence-0111
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/january-back-fence-0111